Skip to main content

How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow

 


This book 
Is for the grievers
This book
Is for the left behind
This book
Is for every broken heart
Searching for a home

-Kathleen Glasgow.

Kathleen Glasgow is an American contemporary author who is best known for her emotionally powerful young adult novels of which 'How to Make Friends with the Dark' is one of my favourites. It is a book about a girl named Tiger Tolliver who learns to live with loss and grief. It shows us the real meaning of family- of caring and letting yourself be cared for. Grief is a very hard thing to process and live with. And to pen it down is even harder. But this book does that hauntingly well. In this story, Tiger's mother dies and she is rendered an orphan and a property of the state, forced to move from one foster home to the other. And the worst part of it all is how there is no guidebook to deal with grief as Tiger struggles with it as the trajectory of her entire life changes.

"Who would ever guess that it isn't your bones or your blood or your heart that keeps everything humming along inside you. It's your freaking mom, and when she's dead, it all disappears."

The instant I finished this book, I just went straight up to my mom who was taking her afternoon nap and cuddled beside her. She asked me what was the reason for the sudden affection. I just shrugged and said that I was done reading a book. She fell back asleep within moments, her fingers entangled in my hair and her arm around me holding me close. Now, she might not even remember that particular moment if I ask her about it now. But I do. I do now and I will forever because I was so scared of a loss that I had not even experienced. My heart was beating too hard even at the mere thought of the grief that would choke me if I ever experience a loss like that. Glasgow's writing is that much realistically emotional. The way she describes feelings, pain and grief- it's raw, devastatingly so. Her writing and the story tore at my heart multiple times. I highly recommend this book but before you start it, do look up the trigger warnings because the content is quite heavy.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Significance of Jo March's Monologue in 'Little Women'

'Little Women', a classic novel by Louisa May Alcott was adapted into a movie under the direction of Greta Gerwig (one of my absolute favourite directors of all time) in the year 2019. It portrays the lives of four sisters- Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy- navigating love, aspirations, and societal expectations during the Civil War era. The film beautifully captures their individual journeys and the evolving dynamics of sisterhood. Jo March, who is the second of the four March sisters, is the protagonist who aspires with every fibre in her to become a well-acclaimed writer. It's even more interesting how the character of Jo is actually based on Louisa May Alcott herself, making the story sort of a semi-autobiography. Played by Saoirse Ronan, Jo is portrayed as an extremely independent woman, challenging the gender roles and the restraints placed upon women in society.  Even though the whole movie is something that strikes the very depths of our hearts, there is one particular monolo...

Lost in the Waves

Beaches have always been a favourite of mine. It's almost like the sea calls my name, beckoning me to embrace its folds. To throw myself into the waters and have no care in the world is something too special to me. Because when I'm neck-deep in there, I'm nothing. My weight against the force of the waves becomes irrelevant. And I'm not just speaking of the weight of my body but of my heart too. In fact, I think my heart is far more heavy than my body ever will be. After all, it is a museum of everything I have loved and lost and loved again. And the artefacts within it weigh down on me- it makes me slump my shoulders and drag my feet while I should be floating around with ease. It makes even the easiest tasks undoable. But the moment I step into the water, I'm free of it all. Maybe it is an inherent nature of mine- to dive into something that is ragingly unpredictable. But rage is so dear to me. Unpredictability is so dear to me. It's something I've grown up...

Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again- Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is considered to be one of the greatest writers in history. Her novels like Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse and Orlando, and feminist essays like A Room Of One's Own and Three Guineas, are critically acclaimed and renowned in today's world. After graduating from King's College, London, she fell into the world of literature and joined a circle of artisans and intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group within which she met her husband, Leonard Woolf. It's her fourth novel- Mrs. Dalloway- that made her famous. She made her stand as a revolutionary writer but even though, her writings were crisp and clear, her mental state... not so much. She had attempted suicide many times. She has a history of suffering from sexual abuse at the hands of her half-brothers. The loss of her mother, her half-sister and her father further added to her trauma. She suffered from mania and hallucinations in her lifetime. Though she sought many psychiatric treatments, they were a...